I’m sitting in a hotel room in Boston tonight watching Back to the Future II with Phil. I love old movies’ visions of the future. All those great technological wonders. Especially in this movie, because Zemeckis and company seemed to have worked it out that we’d have ALL the conveniences. Right down to hydratable take-out pizza and power shoe laces.

I’m not so sure about the whole flying cars thing. Can you imagine what the safety features would be on something like that? Maybe one giant airbag that engulfs the whole vehicle on impact. Can you imagine what the road testwould would be like? The instructor would be going through the preliminary checks and ask the driver to check his side, rear, top, and bottom mirrors.

I’d never be able to adjust to all of that as quickly as Marty did in Back to the Future II. While he was in a hoover chase with Griff and the gang just minutes after being transported into this strange new universe, I was still struggling with how he was going to get that bottle of Pepsi open that he ordered at the Cafe 80’s.